The invention relates to a device for transporting and shaking blanks, in particular of stone blanks, supported on pallets or similar support bodies, comprising a shaking station with a shaking table, comprising a feeding conveyor arranged upstream of the shaking station in the transport direction of the blanks, and a discharge conveyor arranged downstream of the shaking station in the transport direction of the blanks, wherein the feeding conveyor and the discharge conveyor each have a liftable and lowerable transport frame each movable back and forth by a drive in a translatory fashion for transporting the pallets.
Devices of the aforementioned kind of a conventional configuration have transport frames, feeding conveyors and discharge conveyors that, in the area of the shaking table, are responsible for the transport of the pallets to the shaking table (feeding conveyor) and the further transport of the still wet but already shaken blanks to further manufacturing steps and storage. In this connection, a predetermined number of pallets that are correlated with the manufacture must be transported. The transport frames are moved back and forth by a drive in such a way that they are moved by a certain intermittent transport distance in the transport direction of the blanks, are then lowered for a return transport movement opposite to the transport direction of the blanks, and then, in a subsequent movement in the transport direction, can lift the pallets again and transport them farther relative to a static frame. Such a device has correlated therewith a certain number of pallets. The intermittent transport distances of the transport frames that are being moved back and forth of the feeding conveyor as well as of the discharge conveyor are identical in order to be able to transport and shake continuously.
However, in many applications the number of pallets assigned to the device is too large so that, for example, only every other pallet is loaded with blanks. This has the result in conventional devices that the future empty pallets must be removed from the system and must be intermittently stored for future use. However, the correlated expenditure is great. When in conventional devices this expenditure is saved, half of the transported pallets must be entrained empty and transported to the associated storage locations. This unnecessarily ties up storage capacity.
It is an object of the present invention to further develop a device of the aforementioned kind for transporting and shaking blanks supported on pallets or similar support bodies in such a way that pallets that are not needed are handled in such a way that they can be positioned underneath another loaded pallet without there being the risk of damaging the blanks supported on this pallet.